Alexandra Penn | University of Surrey (original) (raw)
Papers by Alexandra Penn
Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are cooperative communities of microbes withiin desert soil that in... more Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are cooperative communities of microbes withiin desert soil that include fungi, bacteria, photosynthetic algae, and nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria that function together as “ecosystem pioneers” in low-water, extreme temperature environments, able to transform otherwise lifeless terrain into microhabitats that can support higher life forms. My lab is working to understand how BSC microbes interact—metabolically and physically—to impact carbon and nitrogen cycling within the larger ecosystem. Specifically, we are studying how microbes in dessicated crusts that exist primarily in a low-metabolic dormant state become rapidly reanimated upon the addition of water. I will give a basic overview of BSC science and the collaborative research we are pursuing to understand the microbial community structure of BSCs and the emergent ecosystem functions of crusts. I will also present our proposal that BSCs are a promising system to explore and test ideas of using micr...
Sustainability practitioners have long relied on images to display relationships in complex adapt... more Sustainability practitioners have long relied on images to display relationships in complex adaptive systems on various scales and across different domains. These images facilitate communication, learning, collaboration and evaluation as they contribute to shared understanding of systemic processes. This research addresses the need for images that are widely understood across different fields and sectors for researchers, policy makers, design practitioners and evaluators with varying degrees of familiarity with the complexity sciences. The research identifies, defines and illustrates 16 key features of complex systems and contributes to an evolving visual language of complexity. Ultimately the work supports learning as a basis for informed decision-making at CECAN (Centre for the Evalutation of Complexity Across the Nexus) and other communities engaged with the an alysis of complex problems. A research process was designed to identify sixteen key characteristics of complexity and to inform the development of new images and descriptions. In order to gather ideas from academics, sustainability practitioners and designers with expertise in the complexity sciences, systems mapping and design, I collected 50 surveys at The Environment, Economy, Democracy: Flourishing Together RSD6 (Relating Systems Thinking and Design) conference in Oslo (October 2017) and ran two participatory workshop in London (November and December 2017). The images, definitions, examples and learning points were developed with this research process.
Environmental Modeling with Stakeholders, 2016
Evaluation, 2021
Central government guidance seeks to ensure and enhance the quality of practice and decision-maki... more Central government guidance seeks to ensure and enhance the quality of practice and decision-making across – and sometimes beyond – government. The Magenta Book, published by HM Treasury, is the key UK Government resource on policy evaluation, setting out central government guidance on how to evaluate policies, projects and programmes. The UK Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus was invited to contribute its expertise to the UK Government’s 2020 update of the Magenta Book by developing an accompanying guide on policy evaluation and ‘complexity’. A small multidisciplinary team worked together to produce a set of guidance, going through multiple stages of work and drawing on a variety of sources including academic and practitioner literature and experts and stakeholders in the fields of evaluation, policy and complexity. It also drew on Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus’ own work developing and testing evaluation methods for dealing with comp...
Atmosphere, 2022
In a drive to achieve net zero emissions, U.K. transport decarbonisation policies are predominant... more In a drive to achieve net zero emissions, U.K. transport decarbonisation policies are predominantly focussed on measures to promote the uptake and use of electric vehicles (EVs). This is reflected in the COP26 Transport Declaration signed by 38 national governments, alongside city region governments, vehicle manufacturers and investors. However, emerging evidence suggests that EVs present multiple challenges for air quality, mobility and health, including risks from non-exhaust emissions (NEEs) and increasing reliance on vehicles for short trips. Understanding the interconnected links between electric mobility, human health and the environment, including synergies and trade-offs, requires a whole systems approach to transport policymaking. In the present paper, we describe the use of Participatory Systems Mapping (PSM) in which a diverse group of stakeholders collaboratively constructed a causal model of the U.K. surface transport system through a series of interactive online worksh...
The energy trilemma describes the interaction in the energy system between sustainability and emi... more The energy trilemma describes the interaction in the energy system between sustainability and emissions, affordability and prices, and security of supply. The sheer number of programmes and policies with close interaction and overlap in this area has led to a crowded and complex policy landscape with a range of potentially complementary and conflicting aims. In this case study, CECAN and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) worked together to build a richer understanding of this complex area by developing a participatory systems map of the energy trilemma.
From 2016 to 2018 Defra worked with the CECAN Case Study Team, led by Newcastle and York Universi... more From 2016 to 2018 Defra worked with the CECAN Case Study Team, led by Newcastle and York Universities, to help inform and improve their approach to evaluating rural development policy in England. The complexity of the policy presented particular challenges for evaluation. The case study aimed to help Defra meet these challenges through the testing and development of evaluation models and building capacity to incorporate complexity thinking throughout the policy cycle.
This is an Evaluation Policy and Practice Note that explores the application of dependency models... more This is an Evaluation Policy and Practice Note that explores the application of dependency models in complex policy evaluation.
This document describes the emerging biogas communities in the three targeted ISABEL regions, Bad... more This document describes the emerging biogas communities in the three targeted ISABEL regions, Baden-Württemberg in Germany, Central and Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in Greece and Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the Humber in UK. Similarly to community energy initiatives, a community biogas can be defined as a biogas project where communities (of place or interest) exhibit a high degree of ownership and control, as well as benefiting collectively from the outcomes. Each potential biogas community is firstly described in terms of its context and geographical characteristics. The main stakeholders are identified and characterized regarding their influence and interest in the formation of a biogas community. Intangible assets such as stakeholder trust and confidence, tacit knowledge, social capital are taken into account, together with tangible assets such as existing biogas plants and other infrastructure, land, access to feedstocks and biowaste, financial asset that could be conducive to ...
The scope of the following document is to provide a presentation concerning the Biogas Community ... more The scope of the following document is to provide a presentation concerning the Biogas Community initiatives that are under development in three targeted regions (Baden-Wurttemberg, Central and Eastern Macedonia & Thrace and Yorkshire and the Humber) in Germany, Greece and UK respectively.<br> First, a short description of communities` profile is presented, providing information on communities` administrative structure, location, regional and national economic and legislative features, stakeholders mix, current community`s biogas awareness, biogas power capacity and potential biogas derived financial and environmental solutions.<br> Second, a comprehensive description of communities` vision on biogas initiatives is provided alongside with the strategy that will be mainly followed to accomplish its goals. Subsequently, communities` action plan will be presented containing the timetable of the scheduled actions to be implemented at the first 18 months of communities` activ...
Energy communities or community energy (EC) are / is now part of the local energy provision and t... more Energy communities or community energy (EC) are / is now part of the local energy provision and they can favourably contribute to the low CO2 economic transition in Europe. The future suppliers are citizen which now are involving in this process and phenomenon. Countries as Germany, Denmark and England have a well-known experience with the provision of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Wind turbines, solar PV, and biogas installations are now part of our lives because the technology is ready to significantly contribute to decrease the Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. Although the majority of European community RES projects are linked to solar and wind energy, biogas has also been part of this development with a slow acceptance outside Germany. ISABEL will focus on the promotion of biogas and encourage the use of biogas by local communities. Before this aim can be achieved, ISABEL will find the reasons beyond this development. First the European policies and frameworks will be illustra...
International energy production models are changing rapidly in response to the twin-pressures of ... more International energy production models are changing rapidly in response to the twin-pressures of climate change and declining fossil fuel reserves.1 As a result, low-carbon economies, their management and ownership, have become increasingly important. Community energy is a collective bottom-up approach to tackling challenges related to energy, sustainability and climate change. Community energy projects engage local people to lead, control and benefit jointly from their venture. The challenge is to meet sustainability targets for secure energy systems, minimized greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), as well as for reduced individual and group heating and electricity bills. New models for innovation are needed to realise the potential of community energy projects. Social innovation is a type of innovation that focuses on human factors. Community energy is a community based venture for generating and owning renewable energy. The combination of social innovation and community energy can crea...
In the context of the study of the evolution of new levels of biological organisation, we present... more In the context of the study of the evolution of new levels of biological organisation, we present initial work aimed at constructing a metric to detect individuality, or cooperative systems of agents. The metric is based upon the idea that individuals must possess a distinct, reduced set of higher-level variables with respect to the degrees of freedom of their components. Further, in biology, each new level of organisation is a homeostatic entity in its own right, and we argue that the origin of homeostasis amongst a group of entities is the critical point at which they become a new, higher-level, system. We investigate a new measure of the degree of individuality in collective systems of agents, based on calculating the effective number of degrees of freedom in a system, and how this changes with increasing external perturbation. The results of applying the measure to collectives of simulated Kheperas are presented, and the applications to homeostatic and non-homeostatic systems ar...
Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2016, 2016
Many of the grand challenges that society faces are concerned with understanding, managing and in... more Many of the grand challenges that society faces are concerned with understanding, managing and indeed creating complex living, lifelike or hybrid systems at multiple scales. Conventional approaches have often been unsuccessful in dealing with the inherent non-linearity, adaptability and self-organised behaviours of these systems. In fact the underlying technologies often transform the involved organizations and society as a whole. New paradigms are clearly required and the ALife community can play a key role. Artificial Life offers both tools and philosophical approaches which are well matched to the nature of these systems and can provide important perspectives on how to move forward.
From 2016 to 2018 Defra worked with the CECAN Case Study Team, led by Newcastle and York Universi... more From 2016 to 2018 Defra worked with the CECAN Case Study Team, led by Newcastle and York Universities, to help inform and improve their approach to evaluating rural development policy in England. The complexity of the policy presented particular challenges for evaluation. The case study aimed to help Defra meet these challenges through the testing and development of evaluation models and building capacity to incorporate complexity thinking throughout the policy cycle.
Evaluation, 2021
The use of complexity science in evaluation has received growing attention over the last 20 years... more The use of complexity science in evaluation has received growing attention over the last 20 years. We present the use of a novel complexity-appropriate method – Participatory Systems Mapping – in two real-world evaluation contexts and consider how this method can be applied more widely in evaluation. Participatory Systems Mapping involves the production of a causal map of a system by a diverse set of stakeholders. The map, once refined and validated, can be analysed and used in a variety of ways in an evaluation or in evaluation planning. The analysis approach combines network analysis with subjective information from stakeholders. We suggest Participatory Systems Mapping shows great potential to offer value to evaluators due to the unique insights it offers, the relative ease of its use, and its complementarity with existing evaluation approaches and methods.
Evaluation, 2021
The value of complexity science and related approaches in policy evaluation have been widely disc... more The value of complexity science and related approaches in policy evaluation have been widely discussed over the last 20 years, not least in this journal. We are now at a crossroads; this Special Issue argues that the use of complexity science in evaluation could deepen and broaden rendering evaluations more practical and rigorous. The risk is that the drive to better evaluate policies from a complexity perspective could falter. This special issue is the culmination of 4 years’ work at this crossroads in the UK Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus. It includes two papers which consider the cultural and organisational operating context for the use of complexity in evaluation and four methodological papers on developments and applications. Together, with a strong input from practitioners, these papers aim to make complexity actionable and expand the use of complexity ideas in evaluation and policy practice.
Evaluation, 2021
Theory of Change diagrams are commonly used within evaluation. Due to their popularity and flexib... more Theory of Change diagrams are commonly used within evaluation. Due to their popularity and flexibility, Theories of Change can vary greatly, from the nuanced and nested, through to simplified and linear. We present a methodology for building genuinely holistic, complexity-appropriate, system-based Theory of Change diagrams, using Participatory Systems Mapping as a starting point. Participatory System Maps provide a general-purpose resource that can be used in many ways; however, knowing how to turn their complex view of a system into something actionable for evaluation purposes is difficult. The methodology outlined in this article gives this starting point and plots a path through from systems mapping to a Theory of Change evaluators can use. It allows evaluators to develop practical Theories of Change that take into account feedbacks, wider context and potential negative or unexpected outcomes. We use the example of the energy trilemma map presented elsewhere in this special issue...
Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 2016
Understanding and manipulating bacterial biofilms is crucial in medicine, ecology and agriculture... more Understanding and manipulating bacterial biofilms is crucial in medicine, ecology and agriculture and has potential applications in bioproduction, bioremediation and bioenergy. Biofilms often resist standard therapies and the need to develop new means of intervention provides an opportunity to fundamentally rethink our strategies. Conventional approaches to working with biological systems are, for the most part, "brute force", attempting to effect control in an input and effort intensive manner and are often insufficient when dealing with the inherent non-linearity and complexity of living systems. Biological systems, by their very nature, are dynamic, adaptive and resilient and require management tools that interact with dynamic processes rather than inert artefacts. I present an overview of a novel engineering philosophy which aims to exploit rather than fight those properties, and hence provide a more efficient and robust alternative. Based on a combination of evolutionary theory and whole-systems design, its essence is what I will call systems aikido; the basic principle of aikido being to interact with the momentum of an attacker and redirect it with minimal energy expenditure, using the opponent's energy rather than one's own. In more conventional terms, this translates to a philosophy of equilibrium engineering, manipulating systems' own self-organisation and evolution so that the evolutionarily or dynamically stable state corresponds to a function which we require. I illustrate these ideas with a description of a proposed manipulation of environmental conditions to alter the stability of co-operation in the context of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm infection of the cystic fibrosis lung.
Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are cooperative communities of microbes withiin desert soil that in... more Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are cooperative communities of microbes withiin desert soil that include fungi, bacteria, photosynthetic algae, and nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria that function together as “ecosystem pioneers” in low-water, extreme temperature environments, able to transform otherwise lifeless terrain into microhabitats that can support higher life forms. My lab is working to understand how BSC microbes interact—metabolically and physically—to impact carbon and nitrogen cycling within the larger ecosystem. Specifically, we are studying how microbes in dessicated crusts that exist primarily in a low-metabolic dormant state become rapidly reanimated upon the addition of water. I will give a basic overview of BSC science and the collaborative research we are pursuing to understand the microbial community structure of BSCs and the emergent ecosystem functions of crusts. I will also present our proposal that BSCs are a promising system to explore and test ideas of using micr...
Sustainability practitioners have long relied on images to display relationships in complex adapt... more Sustainability practitioners have long relied on images to display relationships in complex adaptive systems on various scales and across different domains. These images facilitate communication, learning, collaboration and evaluation as they contribute to shared understanding of systemic processes. This research addresses the need for images that are widely understood across different fields and sectors for researchers, policy makers, design practitioners and evaluators with varying degrees of familiarity with the complexity sciences. The research identifies, defines and illustrates 16 key features of complex systems and contributes to an evolving visual language of complexity. Ultimately the work supports learning as a basis for informed decision-making at CECAN (Centre for the Evalutation of Complexity Across the Nexus) and other communities engaged with the an alysis of complex problems. A research process was designed to identify sixteen key characteristics of complexity and to inform the development of new images and descriptions. In order to gather ideas from academics, sustainability practitioners and designers with expertise in the complexity sciences, systems mapping and design, I collected 50 surveys at The Environment, Economy, Democracy: Flourishing Together RSD6 (Relating Systems Thinking and Design) conference in Oslo (October 2017) and ran two participatory workshop in London (November and December 2017). The images, definitions, examples and learning points were developed with this research process.
Environmental Modeling with Stakeholders, 2016
Evaluation, 2021
Central government guidance seeks to ensure and enhance the quality of practice and decision-maki... more Central government guidance seeks to ensure and enhance the quality of practice and decision-making across – and sometimes beyond – government. The Magenta Book, published by HM Treasury, is the key UK Government resource on policy evaluation, setting out central government guidance on how to evaluate policies, projects and programmes. The UK Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus was invited to contribute its expertise to the UK Government’s 2020 update of the Magenta Book by developing an accompanying guide on policy evaluation and ‘complexity’. A small multidisciplinary team worked together to produce a set of guidance, going through multiple stages of work and drawing on a variety of sources including academic and practitioner literature and experts and stakeholders in the fields of evaluation, policy and complexity. It also drew on Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus’ own work developing and testing evaluation methods for dealing with comp...
Atmosphere, 2022
In a drive to achieve net zero emissions, U.K. transport decarbonisation policies are predominant... more In a drive to achieve net zero emissions, U.K. transport decarbonisation policies are predominantly focussed on measures to promote the uptake and use of electric vehicles (EVs). This is reflected in the COP26 Transport Declaration signed by 38 national governments, alongside city region governments, vehicle manufacturers and investors. However, emerging evidence suggests that EVs present multiple challenges for air quality, mobility and health, including risks from non-exhaust emissions (NEEs) and increasing reliance on vehicles for short trips. Understanding the interconnected links between electric mobility, human health and the environment, including synergies and trade-offs, requires a whole systems approach to transport policymaking. In the present paper, we describe the use of Participatory Systems Mapping (PSM) in which a diverse group of stakeholders collaboratively constructed a causal model of the U.K. surface transport system through a series of interactive online worksh...
The energy trilemma describes the interaction in the energy system between sustainability and emi... more The energy trilemma describes the interaction in the energy system between sustainability and emissions, affordability and prices, and security of supply. The sheer number of programmes and policies with close interaction and overlap in this area has led to a crowded and complex policy landscape with a range of potentially complementary and conflicting aims. In this case study, CECAN and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) worked together to build a richer understanding of this complex area by developing a participatory systems map of the energy trilemma.
From 2016 to 2018 Defra worked with the CECAN Case Study Team, led by Newcastle and York Universi... more From 2016 to 2018 Defra worked with the CECAN Case Study Team, led by Newcastle and York Universities, to help inform and improve their approach to evaluating rural development policy in England. The complexity of the policy presented particular challenges for evaluation. The case study aimed to help Defra meet these challenges through the testing and development of evaluation models and building capacity to incorporate complexity thinking throughout the policy cycle.
This is an Evaluation Policy and Practice Note that explores the application of dependency models... more This is an Evaluation Policy and Practice Note that explores the application of dependency models in complex policy evaluation.
This document describes the emerging biogas communities in the three targeted ISABEL regions, Bad... more This document describes the emerging biogas communities in the three targeted ISABEL regions, Baden-Württemberg in Germany, Central and Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in Greece and Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the Humber in UK. Similarly to community energy initiatives, a community biogas can be defined as a biogas project where communities (of place or interest) exhibit a high degree of ownership and control, as well as benefiting collectively from the outcomes. Each potential biogas community is firstly described in terms of its context and geographical characteristics. The main stakeholders are identified and characterized regarding their influence and interest in the formation of a biogas community. Intangible assets such as stakeholder trust and confidence, tacit knowledge, social capital are taken into account, together with tangible assets such as existing biogas plants and other infrastructure, land, access to feedstocks and biowaste, financial asset that could be conducive to ...
The scope of the following document is to provide a presentation concerning the Biogas Community ... more The scope of the following document is to provide a presentation concerning the Biogas Community initiatives that are under development in three targeted regions (Baden-Wurttemberg, Central and Eastern Macedonia & Thrace and Yorkshire and the Humber) in Germany, Greece and UK respectively.<br> First, a short description of communities` profile is presented, providing information on communities` administrative structure, location, regional and national economic and legislative features, stakeholders mix, current community`s biogas awareness, biogas power capacity and potential biogas derived financial and environmental solutions.<br> Second, a comprehensive description of communities` vision on biogas initiatives is provided alongside with the strategy that will be mainly followed to accomplish its goals. Subsequently, communities` action plan will be presented containing the timetable of the scheduled actions to be implemented at the first 18 months of communities` activ...
Energy communities or community energy (EC) are / is now part of the local energy provision and t... more Energy communities or community energy (EC) are / is now part of the local energy provision and they can favourably contribute to the low CO2 economic transition in Europe. The future suppliers are citizen which now are involving in this process and phenomenon. Countries as Germany, Denmark and England have a well-known experience with the provision of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Wind turbines, solar PV, and biogas installations are now part of our lives because the technology is ready to significantly contribute to decrease the Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. Although the majority of European community RES projects are linked to solar and wind energy, biogas has also been part of this development with a slow acceptance outside Germany. ISABEL will focus on the promotion of biogas and encourage the use of biogas by local communities. Before this aim can be achieved, ISABEL will find the reasons beyond this development. First the European policies and frameworks will be illustra...
International energy production models are changing rapidly in response to the twin-pressures of ... more International energy production models are changing rapidly in response to the twin-pressures of climate change and declining fossil fuel reserves.1 As a result, low-carbon economies, their management and ownership, have become increasingly important. Community energy is a collective bottom-up approach to tackling challenges related to energy, sustainability and climate change. Community energy projects engage local people to lead, control and benefit jointly from their venture. The challenge is to meet sustainability targets for secure energy systems, minimized greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), as well as for reduced individual and group heating and electricity bills. New models for innovation are needed to realise the potential of community energy projects. Social innovation is a type of innovation that focuses on human factors. Community energy is a community based venture for generating and owning renewable energy. The combination of social innovation and community energy can crea...
In the context of the study of the evolution of new levels of biological organisation, we present... more In the context of the study of the evolution of new levels of biological organisation, we present initial work aimed at constructing a metric to detect individuality, or cooperative systems of agents. The metric is based upon the idea that individuals must possess a distinct, reduced set of higher-level variables with respect to the degrees of freedom of their components. Further, in biology, each new level of organisation is a homeostatic entity in its own right, and we argue that the origin of homeostasis amongst a group of entities is the critical point at which they become a new, higher-level, system. We investigate a new measure of the degree of individuality in collective systems of agents, based on calculating the effective number of degrees of freedom in a system, and how this changes with increasing external perturbation. The results of applying the measure to collectives of simulated Kheperas are presented, and the applications to homeostatic and non-homeostatic systems ar...
Proceedings of the Artificial Life Conference 2016, 2016
Many of the grand challenges that society faces are concerned with understanding, managing and in... more Many of the grand challenges that society faces are concerned with understanding, managing and indeed creating complex living, lifelike or hybrid systems at multiple scales. Conventional approaches have often been unsuccessful in dealing with the inherent non-linearity, adaptability and self-organised behaviours of these systems. In fact the underlying technologies often transform the involved organizations and society as a whole. New paradigms are clearly required and the ALife community can play a key role. Artificial Life offers both tools and philosophical approaches which are well matched to the nature of these systems and can provide important perspectives on how to move forward.
From 2016 to 2018 Defra worked with the CECAN Case Study Team, led by Newcastle and York Universi... more From 2016 to 2018 Defra worked with the CECAN Case Study Team, led by Newcastle and York Universities, to help inform and improve their approach to evaluating rural development policy in England. The complexity of the policy presented particular challenges for evaluation. The case study aimed to help Defra meet these challenges through the testing and development of evaluation models and building capacity to incorporate complexity thinking throughout the policy cycle.
Evaluation, 2021
The use of complexity science in evaluation has received growing attention over the last 20 years... more The use of complexity science in evaluation has received growing attention over the last 20 years. We present the use of a novel complexity-appropriate method – Participatory Systems Mapping – in two real-world evaluation contexts and consider how this method can be applied more widely in evaluation. Participatory Systems Mapping involves the production of a causal map of a system by a diverse set of stakeholders. The map, once refined and validated, can be analysed and used in a variety of ways in an evaluation or in evaluation planning. The analysis approach combines network analysis with subjective information from stakeholders. We suggest Participatory Systems Mapping shows great potential to offer value to evaluators due to the unique insights it offers, the relative ease of its use, and its complementarity with existing evaluation approaches and methods.
Evaluation, 2021
The value of complexity science and related approaches in policy evaluation have been widely disc... more The value of complexity science and related approaches in policy evaluation have been widely discussed over the last 20 years, not least in this journal. We are now at a crossroads; this Special Issue argues that the use of complexity science in evaluation could deepen and broaden rendering evaluations more practical and rigorous. The risk is that the drive to better evaluate policies from a complexity perspective could falter. This special issue is the culmination of 4 years’ work at this crossroads in the UK Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus. It includes two papers which consider the cultural and organisational operating context for the use of complexity in evaluation and four methodological papers on developments and applications. Together, with a strong input from practitioners, these papers aim to make complexity actionable and expand the use of complexity ideas in evaluation and policy practice.
Evaluation, 2021
Theory of Change diagrams are commonly used within evaluation. Due to their popularity and flexib... more Theory of Change diagrams are commonly used within evaluation. Due to their popularity and flexibility, Theories of Change can vary greatly, from the nuanced and nested, through to simplified and linear. We present a methodology for building genuinely holistic, complexity-appropriate, system-based Theory of Change diagrams, using Participatory Systems Mapping as a starting point. Participatory System Maps provide a general-purpose resource that can be used in many ways; however, knowing how to turn their complex view of a system into something actionable for evaluation purposes is difficult. The methodology outlined in this article gives this starting point and plots a path through from systems mapping to a Theory of Change evaluators can use. It allows evaluators to develop practical Theories of Change that take into account feedbacks, wider context and potential negative or unexpected outcomes. We use the example of the energy trilemma map presented elsewhere in this special issue...
Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 2016
Understanding and manipulating bacterial biofilms is crucial in medicine, ecology and agriculture... more Understanding and manipulating bacterial biofilms is crucial in medicine, ecology and agriculture and has potential applications in bioproduction, bioremediation and bioenergy. Biofilms often resist standard therapies and the need to develop new means of intervention provides an opportunity to fundamentally rethink our strategies. Conventional approaches to working with biological systems are, for the most part, "brute force", attempting to effect control in an input and effort intensive manner and are often insufficient when dealing with the inherent non-linearity and complexity of living systems. Biological systems, by their very nature, are dynamic, adaptive and resilient and require management tools that interact with dynamic processes rather than inert artefacts. I present an overview of a novel engineering philosophy which aims to exploit rather than fight those properties, and hence provide a more efficient and robust alternative. Based on a combination of evolutionary theory and whole-systems design, its essence is what I will call systems aikido; the basic principle of aikido being to interact with the momentum of an attacker and redirect it with minimal energy expenditure, using the opponent's energy rather than one's own. In more conventional terms, this translates to a philosophy of equilibrium engineering, manipulating systems' own self-organisation and evolution so that the evolutionarily or dynamically stable state corresponds to a function which we require. I illustrate these ideas with a description of a proposed manipulation of environmental conditions to alter the stability of co-operation in the context of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm infection of the cystic fibrosis lung.